Tuesday, September 27, 2016

The Peanut Gallery

Tuesday Comc Strip Day.

In April 2011 I shared with you a couple of scans from a small strip that has long fascinated me, Amall World by Briers. It featured kids dressed as adults (down to shoes that are far too big) playing as if they were their parents. It was probably inspired byPeanuts, but also enough of it's own thing to be viable. Unfortunately, other than a short run in the New York Herald Tribune, it didn't seem to have gone too far. Years after that I found out that the artist who called himself Briers wass in fact S. B. Stevens and had been doing kids cartoons in a similar style (wiwithout the ill fitting clothes part) for years. most notably in a series of cartoons for The American Legion called General Misschief, which ran long before Peanuts came along. So Stevens may have tried to hitch a ride on Charles Schulz' coattails, he was very much his own creature. I showed those cartoons earlier this year. Bot can be seen if you follow the link.

Recently I came across yet another Stevens strip which seems to have run even shorter. Not as destinct as Small World, it
did feature kids and may agian have been inspired by the succes of peanuts. Here are the few I could find, along with a fluf piece about the artist. I also found another single cartoon he did for Judge, which I am sharing uncleaned, just to get on with it.

In the course of preparing this piece I saw that I still have to scan and show the rest of my Small World collection ,wich I will do soon.

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